Willie Perkins, man, what a great guy! He’s just a great guy anyway. He stayed for the whole thing at the Big House, I mean, good night! He ain’t no spring chicken you know, but I mean he’s sitting out there in that heat. I’m like, “Man, he must be made of steel or something.” You know? Well no, if he was steel, it’d be even hotter, wouldn’t it?
He’s the “Real McCoy.” He really is a good guy man, I like him a lot. He’s one of those people I’m just proud to know because he’s such an incredible human being. You know being the Allman Brothers fan that I am and the idea that I actually have some of those folks as friends now, you know, in addition to being idols or mentors or how- ever you want to put it. It’s just incredible to me. There’s days that I go, “You know, I just got off the phone with Willie Perkins, you know. That’s pretty nutty.”
Yeah, I know what you mean, man. I’ve had that happen over the past fifteen or twenty years, you know I idolized all these people when I was in high school and college and then not only from get- ting to meet and getting to know every- body from Dickey Betts on down the line, but getting to play with them, you know, jam with them and get on stage with them. It’s like “Wow!” It’s pretty amazing, I have to kind of pinch my- self… Even when we were doing that show and I’m singing and I looked over and there’s Paul Hornsby playing the piano, you know and we were doing “This Old Cowboy” by the Marshall Tucker Band and I was watching Paul play the piano solo and it dawned on me, “Wait a minute, he’s the one that played it on the record!” (Laughs) That’s right.
Yeah, it’s surreal. I just feel very blessed, you know, just like I know you
do. Well, let’s go back to the beginning about when you were hatched. Tell me about where you were born and raised. Well, I’m from Hamilton, Ohio, and I still live in Hamilton, Ohio. In fact I live in the house where . . . in the second house where I grew up in.
So what was your first exposure to music? What made be interested in being a musician? You know, it’s kind of funny. I started played real early. My folks got me piano lessons starting when I was five and I started taking guitar lessons with a guy who turned out to be a world class jazz player that taught here in town. He played at my folk’s bars a little bit, a fellow named Cal Collins. You oughta check Cal out. Cal played in the Benny Goodman sextet at one point, played with Woody Her- man. There’s all sorts of cool stuff for Cal Collins on YouTube. But, I mean, he was my guitar teacher when I was a kid and what a fortuitous thing that I ended up having a guy that’s a world renowned player as a guitar teacher, just because he also, when he was in town, taught at the little corner music store. Actually, it wasn’t on the corner, it was in the middle of the block, but that’s not the big deal there. But I was just lucky to have a guy like Cal as a teacher and just kind of went on with it through my teens and stuff, never played in a band, never even thought I would play in a band, went away to college, went to Michigan State cuz I could get a ROTC scholarship there. That was the only way I could afford to go to school. And went in to buy strings for my guitar one day and saw an ad that read, “Blues band needs keyboard player or guitar player.” And I thought, “Well, I can do either one of those.” You know, I’d always sat home and played with my albums. I was that guy that sat in the bedroom with my albums. And that was what I did. And I went out and started playing in this band- that was 1975 and I’ve really never looked backward too
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